The Submarine - The Hidden PR Industry Underneath the News: The Invisible Submarine of the Media

Yigit Konur's Curation

"This article written by Paul Graham in 2005 analyzes the impact of the public relations (PR) industry in the media and their strategies for creating ""buzz"". Graham points out that PR firms create the perception of a significant trend by feeding stories to multiple publications. He also examines the media's dependence on PR firms and how bloggers are considered more reliable than these firms. He suggests that the Internet has the potential to track the influence of PR firms and create a new sport called ""PR diving"".

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# The Submarine (The Hidden PR Industry Underneath the News: The Invisible Submarine of the Media)

April 2005

Suits make a corporate comeback, says the [_New York Times_](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/fashion/thursdaystyles/14peacock.html?ex=1271131200&en=e96f2670387e3636&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland). Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in [February](http://www.cvbizlink.com/articles/2005/04/07/news/news/doc42406f05edf53293947237.prt), [September 2004](http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2004-09-01-suits_x.htm), [June 2004](http://www.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/06/23/go.fashion.jones/), [March 2004](http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04062/279616.stm), [September 2003](http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-03/09-21-03/c01li238.htm), [November 2002](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_46/b3808122.htm), [April 2002](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/s_65540.html), and [February 2002](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1836010.stm).

Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms [tell](http://www.maximumexposurepr.com/middleMAA.html) them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.

I know because I spent years hunting such ""press hits."" Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it. PR is the news equivalent of search engine optimization; instead of buying ads, which readers ignore, you get yourself inserted directly into the stories. [1]

[Our PR firm](http://schwartz-pr.com/client_coverage.php) was one of the best in the business. In 18 months, they got press hits in over 60 different publications. And we weren't the only ones they did great things for. In 1997 I got a call from another startup founder considering hiring them to promote his company. I told him they were PR gods, worth every penny of their outrageous fees. But I remember thinking his company's name was odd. Why call an auction site ""eBay""?

**Symbiosis**

PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them mere propaganda.

If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won't lie to them.

A good flatterer doesn't lie, but tells his victim selective truths (what a nice color your eyes are). Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true, but whose truth favors their clients.

For example, our PR firm often pitched stories about how the Web let small merchants compete with big ones. This was perfectly true. But the reason reporters ended up writing stories about this particular truth, rather than some other one, was that small merchants were our target market, and we were paying the piper.

Different publications vary greatly in their reliance on PR firms. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. [2] The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it look like a magazine. They're so desperate for ""content"" that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you take the trouble to write them to read like articles.

At the other extreme are publications like the _New York Times_ and the _Wall Street Journal_. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the _Times_. [3]

The weak point of the top reporters is not laziness, but vanity. You don't pitch stories to them. You have to approach them as if you were a specimen under their all-seeing microscope, and make it seem as if the story you want them to run is something they thought of themselves.

Our greatest PR coup was a two-part one. We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this ""fact"" was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 20% of the online store market.

This was roughly true. We really did have the biggest share of the online store market, and 5000 was our best guess at its size. But the way the story appeared in the press sounded a lot more definite.

Reporters like definitive statements. For example, many of the stories about Jeremy Jaynes's conviction say that he was one of the 10 worst spammers. This ""fact"" originated in Spamhaus's ROKSO list, which I think even Spamhaus would admit is a rough guess at the top spammers. The first stories about Jaynes cited this source, but now it's simply repeated as if it were part of the indictment. [4]

All you can say with certainty about Jaynes is that he was a fairly big spammer. But reporters don't want to print vague stuff like ""fairly big."" They want statements with punch, like ""top ten."" And PR firms give them what they want. Wearing suits, we're told, will make us [3.6 percent](http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/02/25/story5.html?t=printable) more productive.

**Buzz**

Where the work of PR firms really does get deliberately misleading is in the generation of ""buzz."" They usually feed the same story to several different publications at once. And when readers see similar stories in multiple places, they think there is some important trend afoot. Which is exactly what they're supposed to think.

When Windows 95 was launched, people waited outside stores at midnight to buy the first copies. None of them would have been there without PR firms, who generated such a buzz in the news media that it became self-reinforcing, like a nuclear chain reaction.

I doubt PR firms realize it yet, but the Web makes it possible to track them at work. If you search for the obvious phrases, you turn up several efforts over the years to place stories about the return of the suit. For example, the Reuters article that got picked up by [USA Today](http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2004-09-01-suits_x.htm) in September 2004. ""The suit is back,"" it begins.

Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it's straightforward to figu...